23 Comments

Lame,. so you only look at what you pay in but not, ANYTHING that you take out? Your 'business' does not use anything built or provided by society? It exists in a bubble where ONLY your efforts are accounted for and the rest of society is beholden to you? It must be nice to be a 'job creator' that takes nothing of society and provides so much out of this nothing,. . too bad that is only your limited and pathetic perception and does not actually exist in any reality.

We all live in a society and your rugged individualism is but a sad fetish you childishly cling to.

The rest of society is beholden to you? What are you talking about? If you're a business owner, you're providing work for people to get paid. You're providing local/state/federal taxes. You're paying bills, providing a service or product and allowing others to pay their bills.

I am talking, about business existing IN our community, not in a fictional vacuum.

Your video claims that all the taxes are just 'taken' from the poor business owners, with nothing gained from this interaction. Your video is a silly dodge of reality, zero attention is placed on the myriad things that all businesses require to operate, that society provides in return for the paying of some tax and the requirements of socially derived regulations. Businesses pay taxes because they use and benefit from the resources and structures of society, of the community they operate in. Taxes are taken to maintain the community.

Claiming that society tasks so much, and provides nothing in return, is simply disingenuous, and a fallacy and you know it.

Are their 'bad' regulations and too much taxes, that are largely misused currently? Yes of course, since some corrupt and greedy individuals and groups, have taken control of our government and are currently abusing our society, while attempting to prove any collective efforts are an evil "communist" plot to "take our freedom". Your video is just more of this anti-collectivist, anti-society, greedy individualist, nonsensical propaganda, aiming to push people to act against our own self interest, to embrace corporate feudalism, over a functioning community of people working together in our common interests.

Small business can only exist in the absence of monopolies. He who has the most bargaining power has the most money to put down as a deposit on the politicians to create all that nasty red tape that their big time lawyers just chuckle at or pay. They know you the small fry can't afford the same rent that they can, or swing those business fees, or maneuver around all those codes and taxes the way they can. If you want to own your own business get rid of monopolies, don't feed them. Vote against them, protest, join occupy, revolt.

The film is redirection. Businesses across the board are pointing to low demand as the culprit for sluggish growth. Low wages and inflation are what is killing biz, not a few dollars in taxes. Nobody pays half or even roughly half in taxes as is implied in the video either. Energy ^ Food ^ Insurance ^ Property Leases ^, just over the last 3 years. Wages have been stagnate for 20 years and taxes haven't budged in 11 years so for the author to blame wages and taxes is absurd. The very same class of people complaining about the squeeze on businesses, are the ones who are causing it but instead of having the finger pointed at them, they are redirecting blame to the workers and the government.

Who controls the price of things I listed? The 1%. Who is blaming me and my representatives for the prices? The 1%? See the contradiction? If wages nor taxes have gone up in over 10 years, how could I or my representative be blamed for the higher prices?

Marriner S. Eccles was the Fed chairman during the Depression. He understood after watching the great speculative bubbles of the 1920s pop into massive misery, that prosperity — to endure — needs to be shared. Looking back on those years, in his 1951 memoir Beckoning Frontiers, Eccles would do his best to explain the impact he set out to make. Mass production, he noted at the outset, demands mass consumption, but people can’t afford to consume if the wealth an economy generates is concentrating at the top.

In the years leading up to the Great Depression, that concentrating was accelerating. A “giant suction pump,” charged Eccles, “had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth.”

“In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands,” Eccles observed, “the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped.”

Sound familiar?

Then as now, inequality was hollowing out the nation. Eccles put the matter bluntly: “Had there been a better distribution of the current income from the national product — in other words, had there been less savings by business and the higher-income groups and more income in the lower groups — we should have had far greater stability in our economy.”

There are many resources for accurate information instead of asking me to speculate. Since you are asking me to speculate, I'm not going to follow your exclusionary request but I'd say the 99% pay the majority of taxes. That includes the 47% that pay no federal income taxes but that do pay for entitlement programs. And, we all pay sales tax. I'm a proponent of a flat tax by the way, I'm just not in favor of making the 1% the kings they think they are.

They are just meat bags like the rest of us and need to get a grip on their narcissism and greed. There is nothing about having money that makes a person more important than another or more entitled to a healthy comfortable life nor is it a license to starve the working class. It just means you have more money, nothing more, nothing less. It's the artificial social hierarchy the 1% has installed in our society that I take issue with, not their money.

Ya know richard, maybe you should improve your ground game and go and talk to some business owners local to you. Forget what you can google on the internet to conveniently support your bubble view. Go out and TALK to your local business owners. You'll get an eye opening.

And this 1% stuff? Let me tell you, big business is pushing for regulation on agriculture, environment and safety to run small business (their competition) out of business. Get past the 1%/99% stuff. It's for a small mind. You really need to get out a little and improve your ground game - find out what's going on in the real world.

I really don't know. I'm closing my business this month because I can't afford to operate any longer. I've more or less struggled to survive since 2001 and although we had a few better years, the bad years became increasingly more difficult to overcome. Small businesses are not being encouraged and instead it seems to me that they are actually being discouraged at the state, local and federal level. The state requirements are worse than the federal. I would not recommend that anyone create a small business anymore and yet, sadly for many, being self employed is about the only way to create income and job security anymore. If you do decide to start a small business, keep it simple and small. Become a peddler or an ebayer, make something crafty/trendy and sell it online and at local markets. Even better- just provide a labor service like polishing silver, repairing shoes, a mechanic, grass cutting, pet sitting, installing home networks, cooking/catering/baking. That way you don't have to worry about being a state tax collector but don't count on earning enough to save anything because after you are forced to pay healthcare, liability business insurance and other necessary operating expenses then you will have just enough to afford your living expenses ( hopefully). If you have ever watched Shark Tank or American Idol then you may realize that it's commonplace for millionaires to capitalize on the small inventor or artist by owning them. It's slavery by a different name.